Ryan McNeil
It’s a bumpy road to the finish, but when we get there we find ourselves in a truly wonderful place. Here are my thoughts on the end of it all.
Begging your pardon, I’m not going to go too far into the plot. My feeling is that either you already know it, or if you don’t – you should just let it play. I will say that HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS pt. 2 picks up immediately where its predecessor left off. Harry, Hermione, and Ron now have a clearer picture as to how to find and destroy the remaining Horcruxes…and the task sends them back to Hogwarts, where the mother of all battles awaits.
This film is an epic and fitting conclusion to the series we’ve all been following in multiplexes for a decade now. Through the earliest chapters, the spectre of dark magic and bloodthirsty violence was only whispered. In the later chapters it was touched upon, but often only as a fraction of what might come to pass if the willing weren’t successful in completing the task. Now the darkness and violence is on full display. It is no longer being whispered about in classrooms, it sparks screams of terror in open ground. Where payoff is concerned, it’s hard to imagine any that could be better than this.
The film also finally secures Harry’s legacy as “The Chosen One”. Through many an adventure over seven films so far, he has often been graced dumb luck, great allies, or both. Here however, Harry is finally ready to be decisive and make daring decisions. His actions stand in stark contrast to the last film (the first half of this particular tale) where he was wandering aimlessly, waiting for somebody to tell him what to do next. It’s almost as if something clicked when Harry buried Dobby: “This is what being indecisive brings me…it’s what it has brought me for years now…the death of those I care about.”
So by the time this film begins…literally moments after he finishes burying his friend…Harry has become a man of action. As always he has his brothers and sisters in arms to lean on (and again, he does) but this time, he takes the lead. As such, everybody can see a determination in Harry that they’ve never seen before – including us. If one were to tell the story of how a boy grows into a man, they’d be pressed to do better than the evolution of one Harry James Potter.
But that’s not to say that this film is without flaws…far from it in fact.
For starters, you might recall that I took a lot of heat for calling the last film “incomplete”. When I consider that film in conjunction with this film, I stand by that assessment. This film feels more cohesive. Where the last film lacked a sound ending note, this film lacks a proper beginning, but that’s more forgivable. It’s more frustrating for a storyteller to trail off than if they started in the middle and left it to you to catch up.
When taken together, the films create something with broad daring scale. They reach to every corner of the world the author created and then go to the heart of danger for one final brawl. I contend that had the studio been as daring as the author, and combined the films into one 3+ hour event, it would stand as a monumental achievement.
This particular film – part 7.2 if you will – has an odd pacing problem. David Yates is still wildly obsessed with taking the scenic route in and out of scenes. Even as the bedlam begins, he still always wants to start the camera miles back and carry us in. That’s not always a bad decision as it can create some wonderful perspective, but when its done time after time it begins to add up. David – this is the end of the story. I know what this world looks like by now…intimately. Get on with things please.
He oddly makes up for it by short-changing some important moments. I felt like a few of the deaths that happen during the battle of Hogwarts don’t carry the sort of weight they should. Either because the series didn’t spend enough time with the characters already, or the fact that the event of their death was off-camera, or that we weren’t given time to grieve. Back on the action side of things, the staging of moments like “Molly Weasly goes Bad-Ass” and the final Potter/Voldermort duel feel rushed. It’s an odd decision since we’ve spent eight years building up to this battle…one would think they’d have mapped out the emotional beats better.
But warts-and-all, this final film delivers. It reminds us early and often of how far we’ve come with these characters, and paints a very dreary picture of the stakes. Like us, they have not gone unaffected through their life.
Those who came to this series young – both books and films – feel a kinship with Harry. They feel like they have grown up with him. For those of us who came in older, there’s a different feeling…the feeling that we have helped raise him. We share the feeling of his teachers, his surrogate older siblings, his godparents and his parents – both surrogate and blood. We have watched over him since he was a meek boy living in a cupboard, and now we stand proud to see the man he has become.
It feels sad to be saying goodbye to these films after ten years, but it also makes me happy to have witnessed the tale of young harry Potter as it happened.